ACGF - Afghan Credit Guarantee Foundation

ACGF – Afghan Credit Guarantee Foundation (ACGF) is a charitable foundation based in Cologne, Germany. ACGF's mission is to improve access to finance for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Afghanistan by providing credit guarantees and technical assistance to Partner Institutions (PIs) – banks, micro-finance and micro-deposit institutions.

In the challenging economic and political environment of Afghanistan, ACGF utilizes its funds effectively in order to create wide-reaching developmental impact. Improvement of access to finance helps to create and strengthen employment in the Afghan SME sector, which is the core employment market of the country.

Photographer: Reshad Rasooly

ACGF was registered in 2014 as a charitable foundation under the German law of the state of North-Rhine Westphalia and is considered as official participation of the German government (Bundesbeteiligung) for Afghanistan. ACGF was established following a decade of successful performance of Credit Guarantee Facility for Afghanistan (CGF-A), which was financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Since 2005 the implementation of the CGF-A was carried out by DEG – Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (DEG). ACGF took over the CGF-A operations from DEG in January 2015.

Presently, representatives of BMZ, DEG and the Afghan Ministry of Finance are members of ACGF’s Board of Trustees and participate in the foundation’s strategic decision making. On the ground, ACGF receives consulting services from SME Client Support Afghanistan LLC (SCSA), a local subsidiary in Kabul, which consults ACGF in various operational tasks, guarantee appraisal and Technical Assistance (TA) activities on the ground, in all regions of Afghanistan.

On a broader level, ACGF is associated with LANDT, a group of aligned companies focused on setting up and operating credit guarantee funds and providing TA. At present stage LANDT operates two credit guarantee funds - in Afghanistan and Tajikistan.